All Music is Improv
Finding pathways from one beat to the next
People admire those who can improvise, but too often we place it on an imaginary pedestal. In reality, improvisation is what music is all about. It’s not a magic trick, like making a tune appear out of a hat. Most of the time, it is simply an effort to find a pathway to get us to the right note at the right time.
Composers like Beethoven improvised all the time, and managed to write down some of what they created. When we play those compositions, we try to absorb the spirit the composer put into them, so that they can sound as fresh as when they were written.
Too often, though, learning music seems to be about perfecting the playing of a given sequence of notes. It really should be about appreciating the way a tune (or composer) arrives at its musical destinations. Like GPS, a tune takes you to the next turn (beat), the next route (phrase), the next town (theme or part). This itinerary is what each piece of music is saying to us listeners. It’s the story we tell as we play a tune.
To focus on the perfection of each note is like focusing on each letter of each word you say. Ultimately, as much as we may want to spell well and say everything perfectly, our top priority is getting the message across. To focus on letters or words instead of the message is missing the forest for the trees.
Try thinking about improvising as in this little exercise:
Learn the beat notes of one phrase of a tune — the notes that fall right on the beat. There are only four, for example, in each phrase of a jig or reel (two beats per measure, and two measures per phrase). Once you know those four beat notes, try improvising your way from one to the next, while sticking with the timing of the tune. Just fill in one or more notes that can take you from one beat note to the next. If it's a jig, play triplets; if it's a reel, play four eighth notes per beat. Your entire goal is to pass through those four beat notes, arriving at each one on time, by hook or by crook, and never mind any weird sounds that may come out in between! Notice that there are multiple ways to get from one note to another; you might follow a direct path, such as up a scale, or an indirect path, such as jumping high or low before arriving. How many routes can you come up with?
If you try this with a tune you've heard or played before, chances are that your improvisation will hew close to the way the tune actually goes, because you already have a sense of its profile — the rise and fall of the melody line — and are likely to mimic that. But maybe you'll find a new way, new notes, a new path, that get you from one beat to the next. Hang onto those if you like them. You might have found a nice variation on the tune!
Keep in mind that if you don’t hit the beat notes on time, or play different beat notes than the ones in the tune, you may well be creating a new tune. Generally, if you play the four beat notes of a particular tune on time, you will be playing at least a variation of that tune, even if your improv between the beat notes carves out new pathways.
Just trying this little exercise will help you appreciate the choices the composer (often someone named “Trad”) made in the original tune as it moved from one beat to the next, one phrase to the another.
Working with an existing tune is great, but you can also try making up your own. You only need to come up with four beat notes to make a phrase. Choose a tempo or rhythm, such as slow air, swingy blues, reel, waltz, strathspey or jig. You might also settle on a scale you like (such as pentatonic, minor, or major), and work with only the notes within that scale. Make your way from your start note to the end note (again, this is best limited to one phrase; later, you can sew phrases together to build a tune if you like). Feel free to try a few different ways of carving out your itinerary between beat notes. Always keep in mind the timing you chose, and stick to it.
Whether you find yourself writing a new tune or just having fun with sounds and beats, you'll gain a better appreciation for how tunes are put together. This experiment can also help you learn and remember tunes better. It’ll get your ears thinking and structuring tunes in new ways, and will help you notice more about other tunes that you play.
Working around the beat notes, the skeleton of a tune, and fleshing it out with your own connecting notes, is a great experiment, and you can add to it some spice using different bowings and expression. The interesting thing is, this approach is common not only in music, but in all the arts, and other parts of life too, if you think about it. For example, in drawing, artists learn to sketch big shapes first and fill in the details later. Those who try to draw details first are likely to find themselves trapped in a distorted drawing where key features might be overworked or oddly sized, compared to the overall image. If you want to sketch a face, you would outline it and the key elements -- brows, eyes, nose, hairline, ears -- in the relative places where they belong, like a road map of the drawing. Only later would you fill in details. If you try drawing details first, finishing an eye, and then moving on to the other eye, they may look nice individually, but when compared to each other, they might be the wrong size or not make sense with the face as a whole, making the drawing unintentionally weird.
In music, such weirdness can easily happen if we put in too much work on details before getting a feel for the whole phrase or the tune the phrases fit into. Many times, I’ve heard players try to get an ornament perfect without noticing that they’re playing it out of time, which disrupts the tune instead of adding to it.
Oftentimes people think improvisation is only about making up notes. But there are many important ways to do it. As we’ve been discussing above, perhaps the most important kind of improvising involves choosing a melodic pathway from one beat note to the next. But you can also improvise rhythms, bowings, or harmonies, which might vary from one time you play a piece of music to the next.
Aim to learn the primary message of a tune, such as the beat notes of a phrase, and allow yourself to improvise on the details. You might discover you're playing it just right, or you might decide to work on it to refine the way you think the music should go. Remember, though, it's also possible that you might like your "mistakes" and want to hang onto them. In improvisation there are no wrong ways to do it, just better ways!
Improvisation is a natural part of music, of arts, of life. We improvise every time we speak, every time we sing, or play an instrument.
Improvising is how tunes are created, and if we try it ourselves, we can better appreciate what goes into the music we play and hear, and have more to say to our listeners. Whether we improvise notes, expression, or bowings, improv is what allows us to speak from the heart.